


Secrets

by JenCforCarolina



Series: Eyahn [13]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 06:11:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17441429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: If there is one thing Eyahn knows, it's the secrets within the walls.





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a chapter in _Keep On_ , but I wanted it broken out into it's own fic to fit neatly into a series.

Eyahn does not like the Tower at first glance. Does not like that it is smooth and sloped and utterly unfit for climbing. After years alone in the wilds, the City is a shock, and this monolith of symmetry is even worse. Its bright too, lit with bounce light glancing off painted-white walls and ceilings and floors.

Spitefully, she takes to finding every possible way to climb into its shadows.

It’s after the Gap, after Lini and Seph die, that she sets to work on the innards. She finds things in the Tower, in the walls. Liminal spaces between drywall and linoleum and concrete. Places untouched for nearly a millennium.

(Eventually, decades later, this is in part why Andal made her a Shadowsmith. No one was supposed to find the hidden rooms tucked into the vast network of halls and janitorial closets.)

She finds vents, finds ducts. Settles in them for the secrecy, explores them for the curiosity. Eyahn has always been tiny, always able to worm her way around caves and through brush. The cavities of the Tower’s shell are no different. If anything, they’re often larger.

She grows very used to her journeys. In the beginning she gets a little lost, but no one misses one tiny huntress among the rest. Soon she knows the i-beams and rivets like she knows the branches of a familiar forest. She maps these routes, where no one could follow but herself.

To the credit of the armory, it is well hidden.

To the credit of the hunter, she is tenacious.

It appears as an odd light. A particular blend of hue and intensity she has not seen before. She can predict her surroundings by now, the older lights have a specific flicker, maintained ones a more constant gleam. This is neither, nor any of the others she’s passed. There is a low din of hushed voices, and the vent ahead of her is long and unbroken till it’s end. The metal has changed too, thicker, stronger, stranger.

Curious little Eyahn presses forward.

She peers down through the vent, past lazily spinning fan blades, and the mesh below. The room has a purple tint, like seen through dark glass. Everything in sight is polished to pristine perfection. Someone paces on glass floor, boots clacking with a soft rubbery echo. Someone with a smooth porcelain skin. Painted with blue flowers...

Someone else -out of view- reads off reports. Weapon accuracy, durability, makes and models and efficiency of construction.

“Yeah, could kill a Lightbearer. Easy.” They toss out, an offhand comment that catches Eyahn by surprise, spurs a light intake of breath.

The exo looks up, meets glowing eyes with glowing eyes.

“Dead one.” She rasps, an electronic hiss. 

Eyahn bolts.

\---

Her curiosity is insatiable, however, and it’s not many months before she returns from a different angle. It’s indirect enough that Star doesn’t realize what she’s up to until she pauses to pull off the grate before her and drop down from the duct.

“Eyahn…” She murmurs, but dematerializes again, to stay safe.

There is a frame guarding the not-door, what looks like a plain brick wall. The frame is is what sets Eyahn off guard. She thinks of Arcite and Delilah and the frame moves faster than she reacts, catches her jaw with the butt of it’s rifle. She rolls with it, then thinks of Arcite and Delilah again and quickly draws her red ribbon wrapped knife, slips behind the frame and cuts connections to it’s left arm. It drops half the weapon, then the rest, as it’s other hand reaches back to grab her. She skirts out of the way, braces her back against the wall-

And it falls away behind her, dissolving like a de-materialzing ether drill. She hits the floor with a hiss and rolls out of the way, anticipating another strike from the frame, but it remains immobile. There is a presence behind her, moving closer, boots on glass.

She tumbles into a hunter’s crouch, staring at the freshly formed doorway, and the sound of approaching footsteps. The frame snaps back into as good of a resting state it can manage with one arm hanging limp.

“You have been here before, dead one.” The porcelain exo from that day marches forward to meet her, cloak sweeping like the tail of a great cat, preparing to pounce.

“I am Ada-1. I guard this place. It is not for you-” She stumbles in her speech a bit, squints optics down at Eyahn. 

The hunter narrows eyes back, wipes blue awoken blood from her lip with the back of her hand.

“How… old are you?” She accuses.

Eyahn doesn’t know what’s right to say, to lie here or to be truthful? And to lie in which direction? Older, younger? She looks to her shoulder for help.

Star forms, tines bowed in deference. “You’re alarming her. She is young of mind.”

Ada glares at the Ghost, then takes a long second look at Eyahn’s face, stares into every inch of her.

“A child.” She seethes. “The Risen allow the resurrection of children.”

“In my humble defense-” Star does not sound humble, she sounds even-keeled and calm. “I am not an expert on estimating age from human skeletal remains.”

“You are not an expert on a single matter of this planet. A child. They can’t send her to the battlefield!” 

“She is one of the best snipers the Tower has.” Star counters, defensively. “She was instrumental to the end of the Battle of Twilight Gap-”

“The ethics of this are abysmal, and entirely on par with your wretched _Traveler_.”

“I take offense!”

“I do not care!” Ada snarls, leaning in. Eyahn can't parse conversations much but can sense when something is going poorly.

“I keep secrets.” She speaks up, at last, and it draws Ada’s gaze to her like a lazy predator. “It is what I do.”

“What secrets do you keep?” The exo pries, eyes flickering with intent.

Eyahn shakes her head, purses lips. Ada seems... appeased. She flickers one more angry glare at the Ghost.

“Ours?” She asks.

“Yours.” Eyahn confirms. “Among others.”

\---

The City burns and even down here, Eyahn can hear it, smell it, feel it.

She stands before the false wall, where the faintest hum of the hologram projector can be heard. She stands firm and solid, helmet off and ragged face marked with soot. Her silence is a question.

Ada answers, stepping through the concealed doorway with a sniper rifle in her arms. “Return it when you are done. I expect not a scratch. And tell no one where you got it.”

Eyahn takes it, loads it, and folds it into her grasp, silently turning on her heel and striding off, numb and purposeful. Ada watches from amidst of the vibrating image of brick and pipes, judgemental and secretive.


End file.
